husband’s return. Nothing could be more pleasing than to witness the maternal tenderness and delicate confidence, which appeared in the behaviour of madame to this new inmate; whose fine countenance seemed animated with the liveliest gratitude, and the utmost solicitude to please her revered benefactress. The child was a creature not to be seen with indifference. The beauty and understanding that appeared full blown in her mother, seemed budding with the loveliest promise in the young Catalina; a child, whom to this day, I cannot recollect without an emotion of tenderness. She was then about three years old. Besides these interesting strangers, there was a grand niece whom she had brought up. Such was her family when I first knew it. In the course of the evening, dreams began to be talked of; and every one in turn gave their opinion with regard to that wonderful mode, in which the mind acts independent of the senses, asserting its immaterial nature in a manner the most conclusive. I mused and listened, till at length the spirit of quotation (which very early began to haunt me) moved me to repeat, from Paradise Lost, Footnote 20: Earl of Crawford’s. “When nature rests, Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakes, to imitate her; But misjoining shapes, wild work produces oft.” I sat silent when my bolt was shot; but so did not madame. Astonished to hear her favourite author quoted readily, by so mere a child, she attached much more importance to the circumstance than it deserved. So much, indeed, that long after she used to repeat it to strangers in my presence, by way of accounting for the great fancy she had taken to me. These partial repetitions of hers fixed this lucky quotation indelibly in my mind. Any person who has ever been in love, and has unexpectedly heard that sweetest of all music, the praise of his beloved, may judge of my sensations when madame began to talk with enthusiasm of Milton. The bard of Paradise was indeed “the dweller of my secret soul;” and it never was my fortune before to meet with any one who understood or relished him. I knew very well that the divine spirit was his Urania. But I took his invocation quite literally, and had not the smallest doubt of his being as much inspired as ever Isaiah was. This was a very hopeful opening; yet I was much too simple and humble to expect that I should excite the attention of madame. My ambition aimed at nothing higher than winning the heart of the sweet Catalina; and I thought if heaven had given me such another little sister, and enabled me to teach her, in due time, to relish Milton, I should have nothing left to ask.